Overview
Note, this course is also available in Java. Or why not combine this with content from our Kotlin Language course.
This course covers all aspects of application development using the Spring family of frameworks. By the end of the delivery, delegates will be able to create and customise projects via the Spring Initializr, assemble trees of components via Dependency Injection and AOP, write RESTful services using MVC and WebFlux and access databases using Spring Data. They will also be able to add metrics via Actuator and basic authentication via Spring Security.
Agile development will be continuously emphasised during the delivery, with delegates writing tests for their components via both the standard JUnit extensions and the Spring MVC test framework. The course is fully up-to-date, with the new features introduced in Spring 6 and Spring Boot 3 including support for Java 9 types and the Kotlin language.
Outline
Introduction to Spring
- Weaknesses in the original JEE architecture
- Why Spring arose as a cure for the maladies of JEE
- Configuring Spring via XML, YAML, Groovy and Kotlin
- How to choose between the configuration options
- Springs growth from library to framework to ecosystem
- Choosing between the Spring platform and JEE8
Annotation Based Dependency Injection in Spring Core
- The role of the ApplicationContext in Spring DI
- Different ways of providing 'bean wiring' to the context object
- Understanding scopes and selecting the correct scope for a bean
- Using @Autowired to perform autowiring by type
- Using @Autowired and @Qualifier for autowiring by name
- Using @Resource as an alternative means of autowiring by name
- Declaring beans using @Component, @Service and @Controller
- Creating bean provider methods via @Configuration classes
- A detailed introduction to Spring Expression Language (Spring EL)
- Populating fields via Spring EL using @Value
Other Forms of Dependency Injection in Spring Core
- The XML-based Bean Description Language and Schema Extensions
- The Groovy and Kotlin based Domain Specific Languages
- Support for standard properties files and YAML
Unit Testing Spring Beans
- How a DI container aids unit and integration testing
- Configuring the Spring specific test runner for JUnit
- Injecting dependencies into JUnit tests via Spring
- Creating configurations for different testing scenarios
- Combining mocking frameworks like Mockito with Spring
Introducing Aspect Oriented Development
- The notion of cross-cutting concerns (aka Aspects)
- Key terms (Aspects, Advice, Pointcuts, Weaving etc...)
- A detailed guide to AspectJ Pointcut Expressions
- Support for AOP in Spring Core via auto-proxying
- Why only method calls can be intercepted in Spring
- Declaring Advice and Pointcuts using annotations
- Understanding the five different kinds of advice
- How AOP is used within Spring Security and Transactions
Introduction to Spring Boot
- The need for a meta-framework to manage Spring itself
- Creating Spring Boot projects via the 'Spring Initializr'
- How Spring Boot configures other parts of Spring as modules
- Customising the Maven / Gradle build file to manage dependencies
- Options for overriding the default configurations in Spring Boot
- Building and testing command line applications in Spring Boot
Using Spring MVC within Spring Boot
- How MVC evolved from a Web Framework to a Microservices Platform
- MVC Design (Dispatcher Servlet, Handler Mappings and View Resolvers)
- Registering controllers via annotations and component scanning
- The difference between @Controller and @RestController
- Deploying MVC Apps as Microservices via Spring Boot and Cloud Services
- Overriding the default configurations and registering JEE components
Basic Configuration of Spring Controllers
- Associating controller beans with URL patterns
- Mapping methods to HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT etc...)
- Triggering methods based on parameters and headers
- Passing objects from the Servlet API into methods
- Injecting individual parameters and populating JavaBeans
- Injecting information from HTTP headers and cookies
- Using path variables to inject information from the URL
- Marshalling the body of the request into JSON and/or XML
- Customising XML marshalling via the JAXB annotations
- Customising JSON marshalling via Jackson annotations
Advanced Configuration of Spring Controllers
- Wrapping the response type in ResponseEntity
- Creating ResponseEntity objects via the builder API
- Customising the response code and manipulating HTTP headers
- Validating input via the JSR-303 Bean Validation annotations
- Registering your own validators for cross-field validations
- Using the Optional type for request routing
- Defining model attributes and exception handler methods
- Redirecting output to server pages via view resolvers
- Configuring Thymeleaf as a sample server page library
Writing Tests and Clients for Spring Controllers
- The spring-test module and TestContext framework
- Creating a Web Application Context within a JUnit test
- Sending requests to controllers via the Dispatcher Servlet
- Using the fluent API to specify requests and check responses
- Writing clients for RESTful Services via the JAX-RS Client API
- Writing clients for RESTful Services via the Spring RestTemplate
Enhancements in the latest Spring and Spring Boot
- Support for Functional and Reactive Programming in Spring 5
- The new 'WebFlux' model for services in Spring Boot 2
- Creating WebFlux based services via MVC annotations
- Creating WebFlux services via the functional model
- Native executables and observability in Spring 6 and Spring Boot 3, with the latest Java 17 features
- Using the Kotlin-based DSL for functional services
Securing and Monitoring Spring Microservices
- Combining Spring Security with Spring Boot Applications
- Different options for adding authentication to endpoints
- Using Spring Actuator to collect metrics from running services
- Customising and extending the built-in metrics and health checks
Database Access with Spring Data
- The famously intractable 'Object Relational Mismatch'
- Review of ORM frameworks such as Hibernate and the JPA
- How Spring Data simplifies the creation of repositories
- Customising and extending your repository components
Requirements
Delegates must be confident Kotlin developers - the course can be extended with a content from out Kotlin language course to give a complete package. They should also have a basic understanding of the architecture of RESTful services and Single Page Applications.